Midnight Phantom

Ludicrous dialog! Impossible plot! Execrable acting! Looks like it was shot in one afternoon. How can you not love a movie where someone says "When the lights went out, I held up the glass table top between us. So you're poison dart missed me!" In the scene right after the police chief has (hysterically) dressed down all of his subordinates and they're all filing out of the room, you can hear someone, presumably the director, shouting "Now call back Silverstein" just before the chief says "Inspector Silverstein, a word with you please." A highlight has a "professor of criminology" accurately guessing the offences of criminals in a line up based solely on their appearance. These ultra-cheap movies of the 30's and 40's, made by companies long out of business like PRC, Reliable Pictures, Chesterfield are ghoulishly fascinating, when they're not the routine westerns that were made by the hundreds. The interesting thing is when they feature a name actor (this one has Reginald Denny!) at some really low point in his/her career. You have to wonder, where were they shown? What did audiences of the time think of them? When we hear that half the films made before 1950 are lost, I suspect that most of the lost films are of this calibur and aside from the weirdness value, it's no great tragedy, though there were the rare gems in this bunch....

This is the creme de la creme of awful. It is the slowest moving, dullest thing on four legs. The first third of the film takes place in the office of the police chief, a windbag who calls people in and berates them for various reasons. He apparently is under fire from politicians. There are so many substrains, most of which are unrelated and have nothing to do with a plot. At one point the young male lead kills his own brother and is then not allowed to marry the chief's daughter because he didn't disclose his connection to a criminal. If you watch the film, you'd know that he just found out as the guy was dying. There are others. The chief has a secretary half his age, the daughter of one of the ugliest women I've ever seen. The old lady is a policewoman and insists the chief marry her daughter because the two have been seen together. Then there is this hilarious scene where a series of prisoners are paraded in front of criminologist Reginald Denny. He comments on their criminal appearance (shifty eyes and lack of ambition, for example), and tells what their traits are. He hits on all cylinders. Reefer Madness has nothing on this one. I'm so happy I got to see it and would like to watch it with friends. It's so sincere and so awful.

A new police chief is murdered and almost all of the suspects are cops.

This is a very talky movie. People talk and talk and talk and talk and it gets dull very quickly since this seems to be more about talk than action. A case in point is that most of the first third of this film is the police chief talking to various members of the police force about how he wants them to change their corrupt or incompetent ways or else he'll fire them or lock them up. While it sets up the suspects nicely it doesn't do much for keeping interest. Eventually Reginald Denny shows up playing a professor of criminology and things pick up as we at last get to the murder. The second half of the film is a battle between Denny's science vs the tried and true police methods. Its a bit more interesting than whats gone before but its still long winded.

Not a bad film as such its just not very compelling. There are too many characters and too much talk and it really just doesn't grab you the way it should. Is it worth seeing? If you like old mysteries its worth a shot but I'd see if you can borrow a copy off a friend since its not worth renting or purchasing since you'll probably watch it just once.

1935's "Midnight Phantom" was a rare non-Western from Reliable Pictures Corporation, which lasted five years and produced 48 titles overall. Top billing goes to Reginald Denny, playing a famed criminologist who just happens to be conducting a lecture on that subject when the local police chief (James G. Farley) gets knocked off. Among the roomful of officers under suspicion, we have his daughter's fiancée, whose late brother was killed in the process of committing a crime. Then when the police surgeon claims to have discovered the murder method, he immediately keels over dead! Unfortunately, the first murder doesn't occur until the 45 minute mark of this 59 minute feature, way too much exposition for even the sturdiest movie buff. Claudia Dell's promising career never really took off, making her final appearance in a 1944 Monogram Charlie Chan, "Black Magic." In the end, Reginald Denny was perfectly cast, coming off a similar role in James Whale's sumptuous "Remember Last Night?"

With no plot continuity, half of the movie comprised of stock footage, and coupled with high school drama club performances, Midnight Phantom (which has no relevance to the story) is an unmitigated disaster. I gave it a 2 rating only because of Reginald Denny from The Shadow movies fame.